Well it was pretty nice of Mike Kennedy from Vogster to post five free download codes on the official European Playstation Blog for Unbound Saga, that is finally getting a digital release in Europe. Only that it actually wasn't.



On PSN you get locked after trying to enter twenty different codes and now a lot of users (including me) have the problem of not being able to enter legit codes. This is pretty shitty and not very amusing. It makes me wonder how many users got the same problem after getting similiar codes via twitter. Of course Mr Kennedy is partly to blame for this, but Sony has to either change their system or at least put some warning in there.

OK?! This just happened:

A FUCKING WALKING SIMULATOR!
I guess if you are afraid to leave the house, this would be for you. Although the Eurobeat song at the end totally sold me on this game.

BONUS GAME IDEAS FOR KONAMI:
BREATH IT OUT!
POOP IT OUT!
FUCK HER UP!

If you are a Nintendo DS owner, you either have already played or should go and play Hotel Dusk. It's a fantastic adventure game with an incredible story and rather interesting puzzles. A little less known is the first adventure Developer Cing made for Nintendos portable gaming machine with the title Another Code (or Trace Memory in US), that followed the same formula. Although at first glance the story in Another Code looked to be targeted at kids (mainly because the female protagonist is only 13 years old), the story got pretty scary. Most of the puzzles in the game were centered around the touch screen controls and took quite a bit of thinking outside the box to solve.


Now over 4 years after the first game, the sequel was released in Europe last week (Japan release was early this year) under the name Another Code R. The story takes place roughly 3 years after the first game, where Ashley Mizuki Roberts reunited with her father after having a rather dramatich adventure on Blood Edward Island. Of course her father being a scientist and all returned to work and left Ashley to live with her aunt for the past 6 months without ever coming home. Although she is mighty angry with him, she followed his invitation to go camping with him. Unlike the first game this game starts in a rather normal location, but starting with Ashley being robbed of her handbag, you immediately understand, that there are same strange things happening here. For example she remembers things about her coming to the same place with her mother at the age of 3 and everytime she remembers something she totally spaces out.


Like Hotel Dusk the game is very dialogue heavy with no voice acting at all, which is a bit sad because there is enough space on a DVD, but since the dialogues are well written with interesting characters, that all have some hidden secrets, it is easily forgiven. Also the movement between locations is very much streamlined, because you always move on fixed paths. This may seem a bit strange at first, but the game does a very good job of highlighting important things. Of course there are a lot of puzzles in this game, that all use the Wiimote. But instead of simple wagglemotions like in Zack&Wiki, the motion controls and the pointing of the Wiimote are often used in clever ways.

All in all the difficulty level may be a bit too low and some dialogues a bit too stretched out, but the story makes up for everything. Oh, I almost forgot about the graphics, which are gorgeous for Wii standarts. After watching the opening sequence I was already expecting the worst, but the cel-shading looks incredible in this game. Hopefully this game won't follow the same fate as Disaster: Day of Crisis (although that game was actually pretty mediocre) and not get a release in the US, but as of now there is no announcement or release date for the US market.

Seriously everyone at Konami just go and kill yourself. After 11 years you finally decided to bring my favorite game series over to the US and decided to turn it into an abomination like this:

First the news about Pop'n Music moving over to the Wii came out a little while ago and I was a bit sad, because I wouldn't be able to use my PS2 arcade style controller. I have been waiting for a new home console Pop'n Music for a long time, because the last one came out in 2007, so I was at least a bit happy about a new Pop'n Music game.

BUT I wasn't prepared for this. A strangely stripped down version with Miis dancing in the background? Seriously? Why Konami? Why is this happening?

With this I am starting a series of blog posts about RPG dungeons. While playing Eternal Sonata I realised, that almost every dungeon in that game is shit and I came up with the idea of rating every dungeon in a game on a 1-5 star scale with a small commentary.

So for my first game I chose something easy. Persona 3 has basically only has one very, very large dungeon and some small dungeons on the full moon events. Anyways here we go:

Tartarus:

Tartarus is one big, scary, neverending nightmare. Not only are there 263 floors in this dungeon, but also most of the floors are created randomly. Luckily the random created floors are actually a good thing, because in the game you will have to travel through the same floors over and over again to level up your characters. All in all this is a long and boring dungeon, but there is also nothing to really annoy you while running through it.


Second Full Moon: The Monorail

Although this dungeon is pretty much just a long corridor and although the time limit you face toward the end makes it's pretty entertaining, there is nothing special about this dungeon.


Fourth Full Moon: The Love Hotel

I really like this dungeon. First I thought it would be just running through it and defeating the boss enemy, but after you have beaten the first boss, you are still stuck in there and are being mind controlled. After coming to your senses you have to solve an easy puzzle by destroying the right mirrors before facing the true boss.


Fifth Full Moon: The Weapon Depot

This is just a straight path with a boss at the end. Easy and over soon enough.


The dungeons in Persona 3 aren't great or special, but at least they are pretty straight forward and they aren't annoying.

I wasn't expecting too much from the Noby Noby Boy multiplayer update and was really surprised to see that much added to the game.

Of course there is offline multiplayer for up to four people, but there are also different BGMs for different maps and best of all there is an announcer voice (called Fart Boy on the official page!) telling you what you poop out of your rear end in Japanese.
Finally there are also different designs for the BOY house hair.



If you have NOBY NOBY BOY go and get the update. If you don't have NOBY NOBY BOY get it!

EDIT: You can choose your music via left stick to the left and select. You can also adjust the fart volume there.